Documents / FOIA release
This JPRS report, compiled in 1991 and carried in CIA records, translates an article by Aleksandr Demidov of the USSR Academy of Sciences' Sociology Institute, published in Sotsiologicheskiye Issledovaniya in October 1990. It draws on 18 months of polls of Moscow residents to analyze public opinion during the 1989 and 1990 election campaigns, covering trust in the CPSU, voter preferences, and dissatisfaction with how the elections were organized. It notes a growing mysticism, including belief in flying saucers, but has no UFO content beyond that.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 ## Document 6 of 10 lawyers were given the highest rating among all professions. Undoubtedly, the voters were led to this by observing the work of the USSR people's deputies. 27. The demands of competence, a knowledge of the laws and professional political skills which the voters placed on the deputies reflect the current level of our experience in parliamentary activities. In the future, we feel, precisely civil, political and moral positions will again emerge in the forefront among the demands made on the deputies, since professionalism is required primarily for experts. In any event, no competent deputy can possess professional knowledge on all discussed questions. There is no need for this. 28. What else influenced the choice of the Muscovites? An important factor was the place of residence of the candidate. Around 70 percent of the Moscow voters preferred to see a deputy residing in their rayon. And this applied not only to the elections to the rayon soviet but also to the Moscow Soviet and even the Russian Parliament. As a result, 80 percent of the elected deputies of the Moscow Soviet reside in the region where they ran. Party affiliation of the candidates, as before, did not have great importance for the voters, however in comparison with the 1989 elections, there was a tendency to prefer nonparty persons. This also was reflected in the voting results: 58 percent of the communists was elected to the Moscow Soviet and this was less in comparison with the make-up of the USSR people's deputies. 29. The people preferred candidates whom they knew better, as they say, recognizing their face. This was the case if the candidate was not a resident but at least worked in the rayon. The voters also preferred to be personally acquainted with the candidate, either in meetings or at least in TV debates. Newspaper articles or even pamphlets had significantly less effect since the people did not trust the impartiality of the press. Male candidates were preferred over female. The voters focused rather strongly on the support of workers but due to the fact that extremely few of them were running, the share of this social group in the make-up of the new soviets was small. 30. The appearance of preelection blocs, a sort of prototype of political parties of the parliamentary type became one other important and new aspect in the 1990 election campaign in comparison with the spring of last year. These were primarily Democratic Russia and the bloc of Sociopatriotic Movements of Russia. While at the outset the Muscovites did not pay particular attention to the belonging of the candidates to one or another official or unofficial political organization, after Democratic Russia published voter rolls the situation changed. The belonging to one or another bloc began to
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 10 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.